Fellow Nurses Africa
8 December 2025
Nigerian Doctor drums support for Consultant Nursing cadre – Blasts Colleagues
A Nigerian physician has delivered an extraordinary public rebuke to his own profession at the most sensitive moment in the country’s inter-professional debate.
Dr Abdull Ibrahim, writing on X on 6 December, told fellow doctors:
“The day Nigerian doctors internalise the fact that we are just another set of employees amongst many others is the day we will truly be liberated.
The gatekeeper role we assigned to ourselves is unrealistic at best, delusional at worst.
We are not the managers of the system.”
The intervention, made as the National Council on Establishment finalises its ruling in Kano on Consultant Nurse and Consultant Midwife cadres, has been described by observers as one of the most significant intra-medical critiques in recent memory.
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Responses from colleagues revealed a profession divided.
Some welcomed the candour. One physician wrote:
“The fact that this came from a doctor makes me respect him even more. Well done to the good doctors around.”
Another added:
“DOCTOR ABDULL IBRAHIM SCHOOLING OTHER NIGERIAN DOCTORS THAT ARROGATING TO THEMSELVES THE OFFICE OF GATEKEEPERS… is the day we will truly be liberated in the health sector.”
Others pushed back, insisting on medical primacy.
“Doctors are the team lead; he carries the burden of the patient and he is responsible for them,” one replied.
“Every ship has a captain,” wrote another. “Someone ultimately calls the shot.”
A third cautioned:
“You’re not in charge of the system, but when things go wrong you’re assigned the most punishment.”
Yet even among the dissent, there was acknowledgement of shared vulnerability. One doctor conceded:
“Other HCWs are indeed important to the system because, Omo, we can’t do it alone.”
Dr (Mrs) Agnes Nwammadu, Fellow of the West African College of Nursing, told Fellow Nurses Africa:
“Dr Ibrahim has done the country a service. When a physician articulates what nurses have long evidenced — that collaboration, not domination, produces the best outcomes — the conversation moves from sentiment to substance.”
As Nigeria await implementation of the Consultant Nurse cadre, one point is now beyond dispute: the call for genuine multidisciplinary partnership is no longer coming only from nursing. It is rising, unmistakably, from within medicine itself.
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